Money Saving Tips for Honeymoon

If there’s one thing that soon-to-be-married couples look forward to the most in the midst of all the wedding planning, it’s the honeymoon. After going through the stresses associated with ironing out the details about the wedding, you and your significant other will have nothing else to think about but enjoying yourselves during your honeymoon. This is precisely the reason why it pays to plan the trip in advance.

No matter how frazzling relatives, your wedding planner and all the other small and big details about the wedding are, you can always think forward to how much you will enjoy your honeymoon. Now, if it’s the budget that you are concerned about, the good news is that there are plenty of things that you can do to save money on your honeymoon. That is exactly what we will learn more about in the following section.

Top 10 Ways to Save Money on Your Honeymoon

Before enumerating the top ten ways by which you can save money on your honeymoon, here are a few quick tips first. There is no rule that newlyweds could only schedule their honeymoon right after the wedding. If you know that your finances would be in jeopardy if you insist on having the honeymoon right after the wedding, simply book yourselves at a nice local hotel on your wedding night.

Schedule the honeymoon one or two months after the wedding, or at least until after your finances have settled. Just because you want to have a proper honeymoon does not mean that you should start your married life in debt – this romantic event can wait until your money as a couple is on a more even keel.

Your other option is to sneak away for a quick honeymoon right before your big day! Tell all your relatives and friends that you and your spouse-to-be need some quality time together. It does not have to be anything grand, even just some quiet time at a cottage in the woods would be ideal. What’s important is for you to inject some true blue romance into your honeymoon activities, no matter where the setting is or when it is held.

Now, here are the top ten ways on how you can save money on your honeymoon:

1. Cut back on your wedding expenses

If you are taking the traditional route of going on your honeymoon right after the wedding, make sure that you have the budget for it. The best way to do so is by cutting back on your wedding expenses, or at least including the honeymoon expenses with your overall budget for the big day.

Although every bride wants to have her dream wedding, there is no need for you to pay an arm and a leg for it. There are many aspects of planning the wedding that you can cut back on.

Let’s take the stationery as an example. Instead of ordering the invitations, why not design and print them yourself? This includes other stationery for the wedding like the Save the Date cards, Thank You cards, placement cards, etc. The money that you can save on such aspects of planning the wedding can go towards your honeymoon budget.

2. Decide where you’d like to go on your honeymoon – as a couple

Naturally, you need to decide where you would like to go on your honeymoon before you can book round trip tickets or make room reservations. According to Honeymoons.com, the top ten most popular honeymoon destinations include:

Aruba

Bahamas

Bora Bora

Florida

Fiji

Greece

Hawaii

Jamaica

Italy

Mexico

Naturally, you can also go to the traditional romantic honeymoon destinations like Rome or Paris. Those who would like to enjoy a tropical weather and gorgeous beaches on a budget can travel all the way to Southeast Asia, where they can get the most bang for their buck.

Whichever honeymoon destination it is that you end up choosing, what’s important is to come up with the decision as a couple. It should be somewhere unforgettable, although not necessarily expensive.

3. Plan your honeymoon in advance

If you’re flying to an out-of-the-country destination for your honeymoon, it is best to plan it in advance. Doing so will give you huge savings on round trip flights and even hotel accommodations. Travel experts recommend booking your tickets around six to seven weeks prior to your actual travel date. Once you have secured your plane tickets, make a comparison of the rates offered by different hotels in the area.

If you wish to go sightseeing, choose a hotel at a central location or at least make sure that transportation is easily accessible. Also, if you know that you’ll be out of the hotel room for most of the day, anyway, why splurge on pricey beach front accommodations when you can use the money for shopping?

Prioritize your wants and needs, so that you would know which aspects of your honeymoon you can splurge on – and which ones you should scrimp on.

4. Spend what’s only within your honeymoon budget

It is very important to set a ceiling amount for your honeymoon budget. As mentioned earlier, it would not do at all to spend the first year of your marriage in debt just so that you can splurge on a nice honeymoon. Only spend what’s within your means as a couple, so you won’t have to worry about paying off any debt later on.

5. How about a honeymoon registry?

If there’s a gift registry for couples which they make while planning a wedding, there’s also such a thing as a honeymoon registry.

There are websites which serve as a honeymoon registry for soon-to-be-married couples. They will basically create a wish list of hotel accommodations, romantic cruises, guided tours, candlelight dinners and other exciting things that they can do on their honeymoon. Since it is part of a registry, the specific item will be paid for by the gift giver.

If you plan to do this for your own wedding, have your best man or maid of honor spread the word. This will save you a lot of money on honeymoon expenses in the long run.

6. For lower costs, spend your honeymoon at an exotic location where it’s considered off-season

Is your dream vacation destination a jungle safari in Africa or an exotic beach location somewhere in Asia? There’s no reason why you should forgo your dream honeymoon.

The best way to save on such trips is to know when to book a honeymoon package – which is during the off-season. If you are spending a week in Bali, Indonesia, for example, just because it’s off-season there does not mean that it is likely to rain. You can still enjoy a gorgeous weather at the location of your choice, but minus the higher rates associated with booking during the peak months of the tourist season.

7. Consider an all-inclusive honeymoon package

Similar to how you would book a typical getaway, honeymoon packages are also available as all-inclusive. This means that the package would include round trip airplane tickets, hotel accommodations, airport transfers, hotel breakfasts, guided tours and a few other extras.

Again, the key to save money while planning for your honeymoon is to iron out the details in advance. Go online and look for travel agents which offer all-inclusive honeymoon packages to the destination of your choice. An all-inclusive package usually costs less as compared to individually booking the flights, hotel rooms, etc.

When you pool your resources as a couple, you should have credit card points, discount cards, frequent flyer miles, coupons and similar items that you can take advantage of. Using these perks are a great way to cut back the overall costs of planning for your honeymoon after the wedding.

9. How about going local?

If you don’t feel up to travelling halfway around the world just so that you can enjoy a tropical vacation, why not simply go local? Those who are from the West Coast typically head to Mexico, while those from the East Coast usually fly to the Caribbean. This is because they can take advantage of cheaper, shorter flights and save a lot on travel expenses.

If you really don’t want to fly, simply use the extra money to upgrade your hotel room to the presidential or honeymoon suite – or add an extra night.

10. Feel free to tell people that you’re on your honeymoon!

Finally, don’t hesitate to tell people that you are on your honeymoon – especially the hotel desk clerks and waiters. You might be surprised at the upgrades and perks that you will get on the house as a newly married couple. Most people are romantics at heart, so they will pretty much go out of their way to make your honeymoon even more memorable – at no cost to you.

Follow these tips and you can plan an unforgettable honeymoon, without breaking the bank.

About the author

Irina Vasilescu

7 Comments

I love the tip about finding somewhere off the beaten path. A honeymoon shouldn’t just be an excuse to go to a tropical island and sit on a beach (although, we could all use any excuse we can get for that), but it should be an adventure. Finding an exotic place for a cheaper amount sounds like romance to me!

Thanks! I’m still young for this kind of thing but it’s really good to plan ahead. I also don’t get why couples tend to spend a lot of money on their wedding and honeymoon when in reality you should be spending less because you’ll be living together and you have to set a lot of things financially.

When I got married last year we explicitly told people to give us money for our honeymoon. We also did away with some of the larger wedding expenses so we could go on our dream honeymoon to Hawaii. Along with going off the beaten path, try using things like homeaway and vrbo.com. Even in popular destinations you can find great deals. We did this for our stay in Big Island and could not have been happier with our private cottage!

I absolutely had to bookmark this post so that I can refer to it later! My husband and I postponed our honeymoon because we knew that we needed to save the money to prepare for the birth of our first child.. but we plan to start saving for that trip soon and these tips will come in handy.

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I can honestly say this is one of the best articles that I have read. Me and my husband got got married 5 months ago and decided to go the cheaper way of doing a court house ceremony. We had a gathering for family and friends a little later. We both decided to take a trip to Vegas for our honeymoon and let me say it was the most wonderful thing we thought of. We spent maybe $3000 but it covered all of the expenses including our flights. Since he is a bowler, we tend to travel a lot so we figured we will see more of the world through out our lives. I say to forget the big bulky wedding and save up for a nice trip.